A who's who of local basketball lore could parade through a Minneapolis courthouse once trial commences today in Jimmy Williams' lawsuit against the University of Minnesota and men's basketball coach Tubby Smith.
Former Gophers and Timberwolves coaches Flip Saunders and Kevin McHale are among 23 witnesses who might be asked to corroborate Williams' claim that Smith offered him an assistant coaching position in April 2007.
Williams is suing Smith and the Board of Regents in a case pitting two veteran coaches against each other in what essentially is a he-said, he-said dispute that will require a Hennepin County jury to sift through the program's sordid past.
He accuses Smith of fraud and misrepresenting a job offer hours before athletics director Joel Maturi vetoed any employment because of NCAA violations Williams committed during a previous coaching stint at Minnesota in the 1970s and '80s.
Still under contract at Oklahoma State, Williams resigned after talking to Smith and eventually sold his Stillwater, Okla., house in anticipation of rejoining the Gophers.
But Smith never offered Williams the job, the university says. Regardless, Maturi has ultimate hiring authority.
Besides Smith and Maturi, Williams plans to have testify Minnesota assistant coaches Ron Jirsa, Vince Taylor and Saul Smith; former Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton; former Gophers head coach Jim Dutcher; and former Minnesota Congressman Jim Ramstad.
Williams, who has been out of college coaching the past three years while developing amateur players at a basketball camp in Houston, is seeking unspecified damages.
"I have lived a great part of my life in Minnesota and come to know people of this state and have all the confidence in the world that the people who make up this jury will be just," Williams said Wednesday.
A confident general counsel Mark Rotenberg characterized Williams' charges as a "misunderstanding" and said the university hoped the case could be resolved without a trial.
Rotenberg noted that of Williams' 11 original claims, only two survived pre-trial challenges and that his shifting legal theories only recently accused Smith of fraud.
"This case is a pale shadow of what Mr. Williams alleged has happened," he said. "What's left is a case built on a misunderstanding that occurred in a 14-minute telephone call, at night, in an airport, three years ago when Tubby was returning from a visit with his gravely ill father.
"It's unfortunate it has gone on this long."
Williams' claims hinge on a series of telephone conversations he had with Smith during and after the 2007 Final Four, when Smith was assembling his staff.
According to court documents, Smith knew Williams was a Gophers assistant from 1971-86 and had experience recruiting in the Midwest, which would help Smith transition to Minnesota after coaching for decades in the South.
On April 2, 2007, Williams faxed his resume to Smith's office, and the two talked that evening about Williams coming to Minnesota. Smith indicated he could offer an annual salary of $175,000, plus $25,000 for running Smith's basketball camp, to match Williams' Oklahoma State salary, according to deposition transcripts.
"(Smith) asked me (whether) I was ready to come to Minnesota, and I kind of told him, 'yeah,' and he said, 'Well, I'm offering you the job, and I can get you the salary that you talked about,' " Williams testified in December 2007.
"And then (Smith) asked me, 'do you accept the job?' And I told him, 'yes, I do.' "
Ninety-minutes later, Williams testified, he called Oklahoma State coach Sean Sutton to resign from the final year of his contract with the Cowboys.
The next morning, Smith called Williams and said Maturi would have to approve the hiring but he did not anticipate any issues. The two even discussed a planned recruiting trip to Houston, Williams testified.
That afternoon, Williams' troubled past in Minnesota came back to haunt him.
A compliance officer for Minnesota e-mailed Maturi NCAA reports of recruiting violations for which Williams was cited in 1976 under head coach Bill Musselman and in 1988 under Dutcher.
They included providing prospects with financial aid, airline tickets, clothing and meals. Williams was barred from recruiting for two years while the men's program was placed on two years' probation.
Maturi immediately telephoned Smith, who was unaware of the seriousness of the violations, and told him hiring Williams was out of the question, the athletics director testified in a deposition.
Less than seven years after NCAA sanctions from the academic fraud scandal decimated the program, Maturi was acutely sensitive to the political risks of justifying Williams' return and the baggage he carries.
"We are talking about a men's basketball program that has had a history of social ills, a history of NCAA violations, a history of misconduct and incidents ... (that) certainly had an awful lot to do with the depths of the program in the last couple of years," Maturi testified in 2007.
"I did not believe it was the right thing to start this new era of Minnesota basketball with one of the most highly respected coaches in America to have someone on the staff with a known listing of violations that occurred, let alone occurred while at the University of Minnesota.
"And when coach Smith and I had that discussion, he agreed."
Judge Regina Chu must determine whether Williams' history of NCAA violations is relevant for the jury to consider.
To prevail, Williams must prove Smith falsely represented a job offer that prompted him to resign from Oklahoma State and that Williams suffered monetary damages because of it.
"Jimmy has always wanted nothing more than to get the job he was hired to do," said his attorney, Richard Hunegs. "He never wanted to sue for money. He wanted to work for money."
One thing both sides can agree on: Williams will never work for Smith or the University of Minnesota again.
